NBF//Sweden summary: Des Traynor on doing subscription services well

I listened to Des Traynor’s speech Marketing in a world of subscription services at the 2019 Nordic Business Forum in Stockholm. He shared that a successful customer onboarding is key to acquiring customers, and that the Net Dollar Retention measure is one of the most useful to understand how the subscription business works for a company.

These are notes taken during the speech with only very light editing, do expect some mistakes and grammatical errors.

You can get anything as a subscription. Someone somewhere can supply it to you.

Two words: Per month

For subscription providers: Subscriptions provide a means to lock in the customer and make revenue predictable. From a complex and involved sales process, to a transactional one. Dip you toe in and try! The new role of the vendor becomes one of customer success.

The new ways

Net dollar retention. If I sign up a lot of customers, how much of the collective revenue to I have after one year? 1% expansion vs 1% decrease makes the difference. Does your business grow by default, or shrink by default? You need to keep the customers, you can’t burn through your potential customers.

You need a high Net Dollar Retention, to get the right dynamic. Not only keeping customers, but increasing their value. LTV/CAC - Lifetime value of customer > Customer Acquisition Cost. You need to make sure the entire funnel works, no churn along the way - successful o boarding is the new customer experience.

From unboxing of physical products to the digital experience of the provider to care about you all the way. Help the customer make the best use of your product. Obsess about walking you through the product. If you login and have a shot experience, you are gone!

Four tactics for making a great onboarding experience.

Interview customers

Learn what is not working. Why is it not working? What can we change to make it better from a customer perspective.

Decide who you can onboard

Three keywords: need/desire/capability. The intersection is the one to onboard.

Written by: Philippe HöijFamily first! And then I feed my passion, by working for clients, reading, writing, practicing and learning more, about what happens in the intersection of digital infrastructure, computer code, organisational management and sustainability.